A New York man was arrested on suspicion of placing bets on Jontay Porter in games that the Toronto Raptors forward was attempting to lose as part of a sports betting scheme, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Long Phi ‘Bruce’ Pham, a 38-year-old from Brooklyn, was taken into custody on Monday after being stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
He reportedly was about to take a one-way flight to Australia before authorities detained him and charged him with conspiring to defraud a sports betting company.
Porter, 24, received a lifetime ban from the NBA in April for ‘disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes and betting on NBA games.’
Porter supposedly owed Pham and three others large sums of money because of sports betting losses, and the co-conspirators told Porter that he could rid himself of those debts by leaving games early to ensure that prop bets — on him — cashed.
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The three other co-conspirators have not yet been apprehended.
Federal prosecutors said that Pham knew Porter was going to come out of Toronto’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers on Jan. 26, leading him to place bets related to Porter’s performance that were sure to hit.
Porter played four minutes and didn’t score, exiting due to what he said was an eye injury.
Pham and the three suspects that are still on the loose made over $1million in profit, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.
Bets were also made on Porter for a March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings, a contest that Pham and the co-conspirators reportedly wagered on at a casino in Atlantic City, N.J..
Porter left that contest after three scoreless minutes, citing an illness.
He has now become the first active player to be banned from the NBA for gambling since Jack Molinas in 1954.
Porter is also the first active player to be permanently banned from the NBA without having means to eventually return to the league since Richard Dumas in 1995.
The 24-year-old is the younger brother of the Denver Nuggets’ star forward Michael Porter Jr. His younger brothers, Jevon and Coban, were sentenced in May for driving under the influence.
Jevon – who was waived by Pepperdine University following the incident – received an eight-year concurrent prison sentence for the vehicular homicide of a 42-year-old woman and causing injury to a passenger in her car in January 2023. The crash took place in Colorado
Coban – formerly a guard for the University of Denver – was sentenced to six years of jailtime.